Given his background, it was anything but predictable that Ernst RuskaRuska, Ernst would ever graduate in an engineering field. He was born on December 25, 1906, as the son of Julius RuskaRuska, Julius (1867–1949) and his wife Elisabeth (1874–1945), the daughter of the Heidelberg theology professor Adalbert Merx. Julius RuskaRuska, Julius taught natural sciences and mathematics at the Heidelberg high school and also pursued oriental studies at Heidelberg University as a sideline. He temporarily limited his teaching profession to continue his studies in the history of science and in philology, which was his actual vocation. He obtained a doctorate in Semitic philology in 1911 with a thesis on ‘The Stone Book of Aristotle’ and was appointed associate professor without salary at the University of Heidelberg in 1915. At the same time, he resumed his bread-and-butter job as a teacher, now at the Heidelberg Gymnasium.